Scams

[jestep]

I just wanted to get a discussion going on how many people see Nigerian, and Indonesian, Foreign, Scams, Credit Card, Email, etc. I hate to see so many from these countries. It is really a terrible situaltion for these countries. Because of a few people, these countries and IP's have been labeled, by almost everyone including myself, as un-trustable locations for any sort of transaction or traffic. On some of my sites, it has gotten so bad, that we have had to completely block all of APNIC and the RIPE network blocks. RIPE contains most of Europe, including England, France, Germany, Spain, etc. This is millions of potential customers and IP addresses, but the cost of fraud outweighs the value of the transactions from thse locations. I wanted to get other people's input on their experiences with these scams and fraudulent situations, and what they have done to try to stop them. I apologize in advance if I have offended anyone in any way by this posting, as it is absolutely not my intention to do so.

[MaineWeb]

I've recenlty launched an all-out attack on SPAM, updating my filters almost obsessively. These E-mails you refer to are everywhere. I have a yahoo mail account that hardly ever gets spam, but if something does slip in, it is usually a Nigerian business scam.

I know what you mean about it giving the whole country a bad name. I've gotten some responses from our "contact us" form on our site from the countries you mention and it does make me a little suspicious, especially when they are writing about something that has nothing to do with us and our business!! Aside from getting the right words to block, I don't know what else would work, but I'd be willing to try.

[pcarlow]

I recieve from 3 to 4 emails from someone over seas (usually Africa) every day wanting me to transfer money for them. I of course know its a scam and delete the email. I don't have time to do anything else with it. I feel sorry for the people that get taken by this. There was another post here recently were some suggested keeping their emails and then copying the whole list ever time you get one. :)

[sarahk]

I'm sure that in any given country you can find saints and devils.

However reputations are earned.

And things like the Corruption Index tend to reinforce those reputations.

Travel to some of those countries and you can see why the concept of western wealth could pervert your soul.

I track people trying to access my site - like most of us. But I also have a list of people who have used multiple user_agents to do so. Some are understandable and I leave them off the published list. Others aren't. Like the German resident who pretends to be Googlebot or msnbot.

What's notable about the list is that it's pretty international, but some countries are represented out of proportion to their population.

[jlsegul]

I don't think that there is any one solution to solving the spam problem and some of the proposals to do so seem worse than the problem.

I use a couple of different solutions, one server based and one local based. The server solution eliminates anything that:
*Has missing/invalid "To" addresses
*Has missing/invalid "From" addresses
*Has a missing "Subject" line
*Has missing text in the body
*Have dangerous attachments (like viruses)

This seems to take care of 98% of the junk I receive which is at the moment about 300-400 emails a day. The few that I want that also fit into one of these catagories I just whitelist in the program.

Then again, I also have "public" addresses and "private" addresses. The public ones I send through the server solution and the private ones I have come in directly to my system and go through a workstation solution. That way I don't have to go out and check through hundreds of emails each day in trash folders to see if there are any false-positives.

Like I said, I don't think there is a one size fits all solution, because the spammers and scammers keep changing the rules. That is why it is also important to keep up with what they are doing. I got frustrated one day about it and started researching. One thing led to another and I ended up publishing a free weekly newsletter letting people know about the current crop of spam, scam, fraud, spyware and bad programs going around. If I can help just one person now and again keep from being cheated, I figure it is worth all the work. (OK, off my soapbox).

If anyone want to know what I use personall, just let me know and I'll send the info along.

[vintagedge]

The thing that I think is more of a problem than inconvenient spam e-mails are the "orders" received on e-commerce sites. We have have perhaps a dozen orders with credit card numbers, expiration dates and V-codes included. Most of these orders have a ship to address in Lagos, Nigeria. Some of the credit card numbers are actually valid numbers, but do not belong to anyone in Lagos, Nigeria. The first order of this type that we received we did check it out. One of the things that we were told by our bank is that even if the credit card number is valid and we ship the product that because it is an international order, if it is found to be fraudulent we are responsible. So if you are shipping a product to one of these places don't accept a credit card number (even with an authorization from your credit card processor) ask for a wire transfer. That weeds out the frauds really quick.

vintagedge

[jestep]

I definately have to agree with vintagedge, and I think that this type of transaction is more what I had aimed this discussion at. I have had sites in the past, where we were being card tested. This was the actual action to cause us to start blocking IP's on that site. We would see, lots of transactions attempted every day, sometimes in the thousends, just by people writing programs, that test card numbers until they get an authorization, they also set the amount high enough that we would void the transaction. We also frequently have our customers calling us asking if they should ship to an address in nigeria, or indonesia. Every time I have told them to call them back to verify the order and arrange, a wire transfer, or equivalent, and dont accept the credit card. I have not seen one turn out to be an actual legitimate transaction. I dont think we would ship to these countries even with a wire transfer.

[vintagedge]

The other scam we have encountered is adding unrelated products to the order. We sell t-shirts and have had these orders from Nigeria, etc. come in for 1 t-shirt and then received an e-mail asking us to add 3 PC computers, 2 laser printers, etc. to the order and just add it to their credit card. We have had people try to add all kinds of products - jeans, TV's, stereos.

Unfortunately we wouldn't even consider selling to anyone from Nigeria - legitament or not - because of these scams.

vintagedge

[TrafficProducer]

Yes, one day the loss of honest income will bring about a clamp down on the Scams from these countries. They could be, of course not the country implied in the email scam.

One way to damage the ecomony of a foreign power would be the create false emails header, etc. to imply that these emails came from the foreign power so that they get any genuine messages, websites blocked.

Some Scam and Hoakes links:-
http://www.downloads.ukprofessionals...nd_hoaxes.html

[jestep]

We have had people try to add all kinds of products - jeans, TV's, stereos.

Haven't had any of this. We usually see someone trying to order like $50K worth of paper or something rediculous like that. We just laugh at these.

Does anyone know how to report IP's, we have lists of them. Im sure that a lot of them are proxy Ip's but I know that some are legit (meaning that it is the fraud committers Ip).
I think I'll remember this one. Legitimate fraudulent Order Ip Address.

[sarahk]

Originally Posted by jestep

Does anyone know how to report IP's, we have lists of them.

When you do a DNS check on an IP address there will usually be an "abuse" email address given. This is, ofcourse, all voluntary. They may act, they may laugh!

Personally, I make the IP's I block publicly available so anyone can search using Google for the ip and find my records. They can then make their own mind up.

Sarah

[stevealmond]

Originally Posted by jestep

On some of my sites, it has gotten so bad, that we have had to completely block all of APNIC and the RIPE network blocks. RIPE contains most of Europe, including England, France, Germany, Spain, etc. This is millions of potential customers and IP addresses, but the cost of fraud outweighs the value of the transactions from thse locations.

We in Europe also get huge amounts of spam and scam stuff that have IP addresses in the US. Do we block total IP's that reside in the US, no we do not. Why? Because spam and scam is a world wide problem, probably with the US as world leaders.

Regards

Steve

[bobquinn1]

I am the owner of http://www.ebizcompany.com and I see emails daily about me giving price quotes and shipping LCD monitors oversees...They don't even bother going on my site to try and order with fake info..they just email me and say "Pleas give me a price quote on 20 high end LCD monitors shipped to Nigeria..."

No thanks! I do quite well selling to the US

[stevealmond]

Originally Posted by stevealmond

We in Europe also get huge amounts of spam and scam stuff that have IP addresses in the US. Do we block total IP's that reside in the US, no we do not. Why? Because spam and scam is a world wide problem, probably with the US as world leaders.

Regards

Steve

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It's not from Europe, the prices are in dollars, although the email is from a hotmail address and so it could be from anyware. An IP check on the originating IP results in the IP being redirected to one that can not be found!!

Regards

Steve

[vintagedge]

To me ordering items using fradulent and/or stolen credit cards is far different from receiving spam e-mails about making money without working or increasing the size of my body parts.

E-commerce sites that process these credit cards and ship products are more than inconvenienced by having to delete spam e-mails.

I can only speak from my experience but every one of these type of e-mails has been to ship items to Nigeria. I am not sure why there would be a shipping address to Nigeria if this was a scam from the United States.

vintagedge

[stevealmond]

Originally Posted by vintagedge

I can only speak from my experience but every one of these type of e-mails has been to ship items to Nigeria. I am not sure why there would be a shipping address to Nigeria if this was a scam from the United States.

vintagedge

I Totally Agree, but why did jestep write:

On some of my sites, it has gotten so bad, that we have had to completely block all of APNIC and the RIPE network blocks. RIPE contains most of Europe, including England, France, Germany, Spain, etc. This is millions of potential customers and IP addresses, but the cost of fraud outweighs the value of the transactions from thse locations.

i.e. the whole of Europe and Africa, as I have said this problem is worldwide, including the US. Great, start a thread on fraud blaming the whole world except your own country. Maybe we should all look at our own doorstep first before blaming the rest of the world.

But hey lets get realistic here would you really ship anything to Nigeria, the answer must be a big no. But would you ship anything from England to the US, the answer is a big yes. Hence loads of transactions based on trust and good will between our two countries. In a lot of cases these transactions are fraudulant.

Steve

[vintagedge]

We ship our products to England, Spain, Australia, Ireland, Germany ... I have never had a fradulent transaction or request from any of these countries. I have had over a dozen from Nigeria.

I don't think anyone is trying to "country bash". Is everyone fraudulent in Nigeria - I am sure not. But by my count the score is Nigeria - 12 the rest of the world 0.

vintagedge

[terryboydon]

This happend to a friend of mine.......


Beware of Nigerians bearing gifts, warns Nick East of North East Communications in Elgin. In February, East set up a website selling mobile phones. It attracted hits from all over the world, including a large order from Nigeria. A Lagos company “Mega concept computers”, wanted £30,000 worth of mobile phones. East played along. After many emails he was told to expect a cheque for half the amount, sure enough a cheque arrived for £17,820, but was issued by a Glasgow mental health charity. The bogus cheque saved East from grievous embarrassment, He had promised employees that if the cheque cleared, he would “Show my a***e in the shop window”. Elgin shoppers don’t know how lucky they are.

www.northeastcomputers.co.uk

[jestep]

Maybe we should all look at our own doorstep first before blaming the rest of the world.

Im not blaming the rest of the world. I know that the US is involved just as much as any other country. After all an IP address is just a number. I understand that computers can be hacked, people use proxy IP addresses, etc. But blocking those Ip's from APNIC and RIPE reduced the fraud by 90%. Now I truly wish that we didn't get so many fraudulent transactions from RIPE, because I dont think that we should block those ones. So yes, fraud does come from the US, but when people commit fraud in the US, we can report it, and action is actually taken. We have no way of reporting or following up on a report in another country. Also, the government here tries to stop the fraud as much as possible, or at least we would like to think that. So even if it is americans that are committing the fraud, it is usually not on an american IP address.